AMC Drag Cars - You Drive What?

1/11You laugh at AMCs? These three just might wipe that grin off your face.

When you decide to build an AMC, you might as well think of a few cool comebacks for when guys poke fun at your ride. The three guys here chose the best possible comeback: They proved their versatility and performance by driving 25 miles to and from Dalton, Georgia, to Brainerd Optimist Dragstrip, where they all ran in the mid-6s on the eighth-mile track. That's like low to mid-10s in the quarter. There was no tire swapping or fueling up with race gas--they simply lowered the air pressure in the rear tires and went at it.

You could say Jason Neal (with the orange '74 Gremlin) started the AMC fad in his family, since he is the oldest, but his son, Jade (with the '81 Spirit), is the one who wanted to race these unique machines. Tyler Hill (that's his purple '73 Gremlin) is married to Jason's daughter, which gave him a family excuse to build an AMC, too.

2/11

The cars all use 420ci engines built from 401 blocks by Barry Allen, each producing close to 700 hp. Jade's mill does that with ported iron heads, and none of the cars uses a power-adder. This is pure AMC muscle, and Jason's Gremlin and Jade's Spirit rely on completely stock suspensions. Tyler's Gremlin is the only one with a ladder bar setup, which is sprung with coilovers and attached to a Ford 9-inch rearend.

So far, Tyler's best e.t. in the eighth-mile is 6.53, and he's the only one to have run in the quarter-mile, where the purple Gremlin tripped the lights in 10.54 seconds. Jade's Spirit has gone a best of 6.61 in the eighth-mile. Jason's Gremlin is still fresh but ran a couple of 6.70 passes on its first trip to the track.

Any way you look at it, these little cars are very cool, and while they're not traditional muscle cars, they're plenty strong in terms of performance. Jason, Jade, and Tyler enjoy being different from the regular car guys, and they're proud to say they drive AMCs.